Little late to the part, but this is great news. I like the idea of the alien series being kind of its own animal and AVP movies being a spinoff. I thought AVP was watchable (and pretty good within its first 40 minutes), but I prefer it (and Resurrection) to be a separate franchise, an EU, like comic books. For example, I love many of the Dark Horse Alien stories, but I dont want them to be canon continuations, just a separate universe
Also its good to see Ridley is linking to Aliens, although not surprising since throughout the years he expressed that he was pleased with it (along with Obannon, Rawlings and others). As a side note, he did mention once that he likes Alien 3 as well
Anyway - cool news!